What the hell even is a “Laker”?
I realize that the team moved to Los Angeles from Minneapolis, a city in Minnesota, a state that some call “the Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Even ignoring the outrageous mental gymnastics needed to come to that conclusion, what even is a “Laker” though?
Is it someone who goes to a lake? I go to Squam Lake in New Hampshire every summer, but not one person has ever called me a Laker, nor is my extended family a collection of Lakers. Is it the lake itself, some weird personification of the 11,842 lakes in the state that no longer even has the team? Was Wilt Chamberlain a lake? If so, which lake was he?
Even excusing their silly name, the Los Angeles Lakers should at the very least be stripped of five of their titles, considering their 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953 and 1954 titles weren’t even won in California. Yet every time the Celtics and the Lakers face off, the broadcast feels the need to insert some version of the same, objectively wrong statement:
“The Celtics and Lakers both plan on hanging Banner 18 in the rafters this season, each looking to etch the next chapter in their storied franchise history…”
As far as I can tell, the Los Angeles Lakers have 12 championships, and the Boston Celtics have 17. But as the two squared off on Christmas Day, Mike Breen took the pledge and promoted this baseless Lakers propaganda on the ESPN broadcast.
All of that pomp and circumstance was to illustrate a fairly simple point: I hate the Lakers. Not in a bad way, like one hates spiders or coffee that is too hot, but in a sports way. I want nothing truly bad to happen to any Laker or Laker-adjacent party, but I would like them to fail at every NBA-based endeavor they attempt.
Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Hating the Lakers is one of the qualifications for being a Celtics fan. I remember the 2008 and 2010 NBA Finals, but I wasn’t allowed to stay up for the end of the games given that I was five and seven years old respectively. But I’ve been surrounded by stories of the Lakers disrupting the Celtics’ grand plans frequently between 1969 and 2010, and my uncle from Boston and grandfather from Los Angeles have made it clear that the Lakers and Celtics are mutually exclusive.
I think a lot about why certain regular season games matter to me more than others. Take the Celtics’ first loss of the season to the Minnesota Timberwolves. I distinctly remember saying, “wow, Anthony Edwards is amazing. He just outplayed all our guys. Respect.” I wasn’t too upset. Perhaps I expected the Celtics to lose eventually, given that they hadn’t yet.
But I honestly think it was because the Timberwolves just don’t carry much emotional weight around with them. I don’t know any Timberwolves fans, nor have they ever beat the Celtics in a game that really mattered to me. The mainstream media doesn’t talk about them very much, so their success won’t ever grow to the point where it actually annoys me.
But let’s also take December 19th’s loss to the Golden State Warriors, in which I slammed my computer screen shut and despondently face planted into my bed as soon as I saw Stephen Curry hit the “night night” celebration.
The Lakers are in the Warriors category, carrying around an emotional machete with which they make every game a death-defying affair. I want games like that so badly, and I went into the Christmas clash loaded with a mix of desire for success and anxiety for failure.
It started off like a religious revival meeting, with the Celtics’ 12-0 lead forcing a timeout and coasting them through the first quarter. I had visions of a 50-point blowout, the NBA equivalent of being your birthday in second grade. You get to wear a special hat the whole day and bring cupcakes for the whole class. Everyone talks about you for six hours like you’re a celebrity, and then we all go home and do our times tables.
Such a thing was too good to be true, considering the Celtics bench was largely unable to handle Anthony Davis’ overwhelming force. I began bargaining with myself about how this wasn’t the worst thing in the world, as the game would be more exciting, right? Beating the Minne—I mean Los Angeles Lakers in a close game on Christmas with the world watching is probably cooler than just blowing them out, right? Right, guys?
The takeaway from the first half—at least if you ask the ESPN halftime show—was how “analytics” had taken over the Celtics’ identity. Both Stephen A. Smith and Kendrick Perkins decried the Celtics’ reliance on winning the three-point variance battle, and I got several texts from friends asking why Tatum couldn’t just drive to the hoop more.
I’m not going to go into that, as I think the Celtics’ ultimate victory despite shooting just over 30 percent from deep speaks for itself. The win without flamethrowing three-point numbers just adds another type of flower to the media bouquet the Celtics got for winning, so I see this as an absolute win.
In exactly 86.67 percent of games, I’m motivated primarily by my desire for the Celtics to win. But I wonder if Lakers games—along with ones against the Heat, 76ers, and Warriors—are increasingly motivated by a desire for my enemies to lose. The media bouquet for the Celtics is nice, but the whole NBA world having the right to make fun of the Lakers for two days might even be better.
On some meta level, I watched Monday’s game with the understanding that if the Celtics won, I would get to write this article about why wins like these are so special and crack jokes about how the Lakers only have 12 championships and are named after something that doesn’t even exist. I also watched it knowing that I could gloat to my grandfather if the Celtics won, but would conversely have to admit to the remarkable, ageless greatness of LeBron James if they lost.
However the Celtics or Lakers exist in your life, it’s nice to stop and smell the emotional roses that make Christmas rivalry wins so special. And don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t get too worked up about regular season games, as I’m not actually sure what annoys me more: someone screaming apocalypse after a loss to the Warriors, or the guy telling them to calm the heck down.
Allow yourself that emotional distress and elation, since sports is the place for that to mercifully exist. Here, I can freely say I hate the concept of a “Laker,” when anywhere else hate causes a great many problems. So let’s all hate the Lakers together and marvel in our collective success, before another Magic, Kareem, Shaq, or Kobe comes out of the woodwork.
